Hay for forage has traditionally been stored either in the form of haystacks or has been baled and stored as baled hay. With the advent of modern farm machinery, large mobile haystack forming apparatus has been used to collect cut hay, build it into a haystack, and deposit it where desired. Apparatus for disintegrating such haystacks is shown and described in my U.S. Pat. No. 3,972,484.
Modern hay balers pick up cut hay and form it into a bale which is very much larger than the hay bales known heretofore and, in fact, several modern hay balers are capable of rolling a large quantity of hay into a roll-type bale which may weigh as much as 1500 lbs. The apparatus of the present invention is particularly designed to handle bales of such large size, and to disintegrate and cut the hay into short lengths suitable for fodder.